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Work begins on GHES, Cyrus MST gardens PDF Print E-mail
Pope County Tribune - Starbuck Times
Written by Chad Koenen - Starbuck Times New Editor   
Tuesday, 04 May 2010 06:16

Students at two area schools will soon be trading their pencil and paper for a hoe and gardening gloves thanks to a grant from West Central Wellness.


The West Central Wellness grant entitled Healthy Schools Healthy Kids, will allow both Cyrus Math, Science, and Technology School and Glacial Hills Elementary School to create their own community gardens. Work on the gardens began over the past few weeks, and will feature a variety of fruits and vegetables which will likely one-day end up on the students plates for lunch.

GHES School Director Deb Mathias said the final touches are still being put on what products will be grown in the garden, and what each class will be responsible for in the garden, but the overall goal of the garden is to have a self-sustaining garden to aid classroom teaching. By having a garden, classrooms can learn firsthand about plant life and how to properly grow produce in a garden.

While a class garden has been done in the past at Wilson's Farm, which is located near Alexandria, the grant will allow students to have an on site garden for the very first time. Once the crops are harvested on the approximately one acre garden, Mathias said the produce will likely be served for lunch next fall with leftover produce being sold to people in the community through a farmers market.

"The plan is whatever we produce we eat and whatever we have extra we can sell farmers market style," she said.

Cyrus MST Teacher Sue Helberg said her school will also likely sell some extra produce in a farmers market style format and will eat much of what is raised in the garden for lunch. Helberg said the garden will give students a real-life learning experience about the benefits of gardening and how plants grow and may also lead to students experimenting with new healthy food that they may otherwise have declined to eat.

"The goal of this project is to increase student nutritional awareness and physical activity by creating a community garden," she said. "We hope to provide them with the knowledge and skills to continue gardening in their daily lives. We believe strongly that as classrooms, students, and their families take ownership in our community garden they will be more willing to try new vegetables, to expand gardening into their family life, and to see the benefits of healthy nutritional choices on a daily basis.

In addition to GHES and Cyrus MST, 14 other schools in Douglas, Pope, Stevens, Traverse and Grant counties received grants from the West Central Wellness for Healthy Schools Healthy Kids mini-grants.